s/o How did you reach your certainty?

Did you just read, study, and think enough? Like what was the process for you that lead you to almost or 100% non-belief in the biblical God?

I keep wondering if I should actually give the time and effort to reading the bible, because I never have read the entire thing - then I can see for myself what it says and what the biblical God is like. Then no Christian could say I didn't put forth effort in trying to find God.

Comments (35)

If I spend time with a friend that I know has a different belief system I'd rather discuss the things we have in common because we do have so much in common. Pointing out the differences we have might make both of us uncomfortable and that might be one less mommy friend for me.

That makes sense too. There's definitely no need to bring it up in situations like that because, as you said, the friendship is more valuable than explaining what you believe (which may only cause tension or bad feelings).

But when it does come up unexpectedly, I just hate to read about posts where fellow atheists feel like they got caught with their pants down and don't what to say or how to say it. lol. Not that I think you'd react that way, I've just seen a number of posts where people ask, "What should I say to these people?!" or "How do I explain this to my kids!?"

And I'm sitting here, thinking, "Haven't you thought about this before hand, when you became an atheist?"

Having talked to my husband about this now, over the last couple of days, I realize this is very egocentric of me to say/think. Not everyone sits down to figure out every little thing they believe and why -- and not nearly as many people enjoy it as much as me! My husband isn't one of those kind of people. He's never believed in God, and that's just that. He's never thought much more about it, yanno? And he likes it that way, it works for him. He just never brings it up, ever -- or when it does come up, he ignores it or changes the subject.

I've been known to use code phrases when caught by surprise.,"Oh, I'm not religious." It tells the person nothing and lets they fill in the blanks however they want. Now I can say "I go to a Unitarian Universalist church". Even people who go to church rarely want to open the door to be recruited to attend another church

I'm fully prepared to tell it like it is if asked outright. But honestly the people I know are pretty good about side stepping controversial topics as well.

My first time around with the kids I never really thought about it. For some reason I just naively thought if I didn't teach them about religion, no one would. It wasn't like we were attending a church at the time. It worked like a freaking charm until they were in 1st grade. And then I did have that, "crap, what do I tell them!?" moment. Luckily we muddled through it.

I don't think that reading the bible is totally necessary. I mean, it is enough a part of our culture that most people have already heard the stories of noah's ark and the virgin birth to know there's some crazy stuff in there. I think developing critical thinking skills is more important, and also learning about how the human brain/mind works and how it often tricks us (and how we trick ourselves). This was essential in me finally seeing how I had been mis-interpreting events in my life as being supernatural, divine, fated or magical. I had already dropped Christianity but because I had not developed good thinking skills I spent 15 years of my life as a wiccan/pagan! I think innoculating ourselves against being sucked into crazy belief systems in general is probably more useful than focusing on one system (like christianity). Just my thoughts :)

venus, i think you are perfectly correct. it is important to understand what you believe & why you believe it. whether that is because you have thought about it & tracked down every resource or x, y & z just make the most sense to you. either way you should understand why you believe it.

what i was trying to point out is that is really as far as it goes, there are no further obligations. if you want to actively debate people on the basis of their faith i would strongly recommend you dig deeper & hone your arguments, but thats up to you.

Grew up Roman Catholic, but my mom was a convert. Began questioning when religious classes for confirmation would not allow certain subjects to be questioned.

I had a lot of experience with Judaism and different Christian sects and knew that the beliefs were quite different. Went to college and discovered a lot of hypocrisy in the Catholic Church. Then began to study other religions including Hinduism, Bahai and Confucianism by reading about them mostly. I came to the conclusion that none of the superstitions made any sense at all as a Freshman in College at 18.

I'm an equal opportunity disbeliever. I don't believe, with an equal level of certainty, in biblical god, ancient Greek gods, Sumerian gods or a dwarf orbiting the earth in a teapot. I didn't "reach" this level of certainty in regards to any of these things; it just seems common sense that each one of them is rather unlikely, and I never had an inclination to believe any of it. I mean, it's possible that there's a celestial teapot - but I'm pretty sure there isn't, and I would guess most people are pretty sure about that too. How did they reach this level of certainty?

For me I can't say with certainty that there is no God, though I do not believe he exists. If he does exist I do not believe anyone who treats people the way people in this world are treated then they are notsomeone who deserves to be worshiped.

Long answer: it happened over a long period of time. I'd say 17 years. I went to CCD starting at age 5 which was like bible study for catholic kids that attended public school. I had a very religious family. It was a process. Over time, starting at a really young age, I started to discover contradictions between what they all said was true and what science proved was true...or at least had a pile of evidence for. Whereas, catholcism's evidence was always just a book that I was supposed to blindly believe in. Even though some of it contradicted itself and had things like the ark and a talking snake, which I KNEW couldn't possibly be real. The real clincher was the intolerance of others. Anyone who didn't fall into the catholic line "Wasn't really a catholic" and was often labeld as "going to hell". They said god was this judge that we had to answer to when we are dead but everyone here on earth that I knew was doing all the pre-judging while everyone's is still alive. It just seemed so harsh and contradictory to what they'd been teaching me for so long. I learned the world wasn't black and white and catholicism just IS black and white. (Unless you're talking about diddling little boys then...it's a grey area apparently) So the real world and the religious world I'd know weren't fitting together. I gave up the one that made less sense.